Almost all SEO begins with keyword research. Understanding what people are searching for and how many people are searching helps form a solid content strategy.
Beyond the basics, keyword research encompasses many more advanced considerations, including SERP features, keyword search intent, competitive analysis, and even internationalization.
Read the latest Moz posts on keyword research. We’ve also included links to our most popular keyword research resources to help your SEO journey.
Keyword Research : Everything you need to get started with keyword research.
Keyword Research Learning Center : Our free keyword research learning hub. Here, we’ve gathered our top resources in one place.
What is search intent and why does it matter? : Learn more about the power of search intent and how to use it in your keyword research strategy.
Keyword Explorer : Want to dive in? Try our top-rated keyword research tool, with over 500 million keyword suggestions.
Find Striking Distance Keywords With Moz Pro : How to quickly locate, track, and label these keyword opportunities in Moz Pro in this Whiteboard Friday video
As most of you likely know, Yahoo stopped updating Overture's inventory data in January 2007. Besides the issues this may cause for those relying on it for research on seasonal terms (that boxingdayspecials.com buy isn't looking so hot anymore, huh?), it means that search marketers have at best outdated information in the volume of searches carried out for a given keyword in a given mon...
Rather than trying to make this post go through all the tactics and specifics of Rebecca's already comprehensive KW Research article, I figured I'd instead provide a solid list of every which way you can look at a keyword to get an idea of metrics, value and potential from the engines themselves (rather than services like AdWords, YSM, Wortracker or KW Discovery). This is more of an "exper...
It turns out, I managed to learn something extremely valuable about SEO back when I was in high school. Which is odd, given that I graduated in 1991. It was my senior year, all my friends had been in the class of 1990, and I was taken suddenly by an uncharacteristic desire to make my mark on my small rural high school. After toying briefly with the prospect of toil...
Most SEOs are hard-set on chasing the “head keywords” -- the very popular ones. Others are starting to pay more attention to the long tail. Now, how many are actually pursuing the invisible long tail? “At Google's Universal Search announcement,...
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An essential component of any SEO campaign is picking the right keywords. Unfortunately, many people don’t really understand the concepts behind picking keywords. I’ve seen many people, even so-called SEO experts, who think it’s just a matter of coming up with a few randomly-chosen phrases relevant to the page subject. Nothing could be further from the truth....
Matt McGee (who I owe a link to for winning the SEO group NCAA tournament bracket back in March...damn you, Florida) wrote a fantastic post over at Small Business SEM called "I Have My Keywords...Now What?" It's concise, it's to the point, it's magical. Read it. Seriously. Click over to it and read it. ...
Last week I chatted with Levi from Wordze about the keyword research tool he built. Levi, who's chummy with SEOmoz's resident black hat blogger G-Man, is a programmer who tinkered around with various keyword research sites and decided to build his own. ...
Introduction When told that writing for the Web is different to writing for print publications, the understandable reaction of many journalists is that it shouldn’t make any difference; we’re writing for people, not machines, they say. But there is a need to write differently for the Web and the reasons for this are quite simple: the ...
Use your server or analytics search logs to find what people are looking for once on your site.The keywords used to search within your site or narrowed with search filters (by price, brand etc.) are a gold mine of fresh terms and phrases that can be used within your content and links to attract those users. Track what your visitors search for on your site, see which filt...
I've spent this week putting the finishing touches on our keyword research guide (which will most likely be available--both to purchase and for Premium Members--on Monday). This afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Tancer from Hitwise. Bill took me on a walkthrough of Hitwise's Competitive Intelligence tools, which he referred to as their "f...
What's the difference between a fortune teller and a search marketer? No really, what's the difference? The funny hat? Both rely on a keen understanding of the customer and the environment -- and for search marketing, it all starts with the keyword. Note: This post is a way to introduce traditional copywriters to writing with Search in mind. It follows my pr...
Probably the most famous, and most used, keyword research tool is Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. (Which, despite recent reports and confusion about it's demise, is going to stay online.) I've heard some people say it...
In the stock market, analysts and traders buy, sell and trade shares in companies based on the speculation of future earnings or declines. Stock pickers attempt to determine which investments will rise and fall based on publicly available information. Slate magazine recently pointed out that even the best stock pickers, however, are generally terrible ...
An astute reader emailed me (Preston, you're a genius) to suggest that rather than attempt to collect PPC stats on our own, why not tap into the vast resource of the Internet marketing community - surely, together, we will be far stronger than we would be as just one firm. Here's the goa...